


It Flamed Like Anything

by Syysmyrskytuuli



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: First Meetings, Gen, Pre-Relationship, some violence because it's about war (still not the character), technically not shippy but still kinda shippy lbr, war (the concept not the character)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-11
Updated: 2019-07-11
Packaged: 2020-06-26 09:40:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19765546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syysmyrskytuuli/pseuds/Syysmyrskytuuli
Summary: Aziraphale was a warrior, of course he was. A soldier of the Heavenly Host, that was him alright. He just hadn't quite expected to have to do any of the actual soldiering.





	It Flamed Like Anything

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, I'm jumping on the Good Omens bandwagon too, I couldn't help it.
> 
> This ended up being mostly based on show canon so that's what I labeled it as, although it probably doesn't matter too much in this case.

Aziraphale was a warrior, of course he was. A soldier of the Heavenly Host, that was him alright. He just hadn't quite expected to have to do any of the actual soldiering.

What he _had_ been expecting was to just spend eternity enjoying his blissful existence in the glory of his Lord, singing Her praises with his fellow heavenly creatures. Of course there had been talk of a Plan of some sorts, which he should have taken as a hint that something else might come up eventually, but surely it wouldn't be big enough to affect Heaven itself, would it? Or so he had thought..

Then the whole Incident with Lucifer and the others happened. It was really quite upsetting. Suddenly it felt like nobody could be trusted. Angels were falling left and right! It was an absolute catastrophe! How could God let this happen, he wanted to ask... But no, there had to be a reason. You couldn't second-guess ineffability, after all. It wasn't his place to ask questions, that's what _got_ you thrown out in the first place. Surely the Lord had everything under control. All he would have to do was to obey. That was a comforting thought, probably.

Of course, obeying was much easier when it was only a matter of singing praises and not asking questions. Not asking questions was something Aziraphale could do! Or _not_ do, as it were. Fighting against his fellow angels required things like resolve and righteous anger. Bloodthirst was not openly encouraged but it helped. He had briefly glimpsed Sandalphon doing a lot of smiting with an unnerving grin on his face. Aziraphale tried his best to stay out of the archangels's way since they didn't seem to care too much about _who_ they happened to hit with their flashy demonstrations of power.

His platoon had managed to miss most of the fighting due to a few delays. In his defence Aziraphale hadn't, in fact, been the _only_ one who was late. And it wasn't as if he had _meant_ to forget his sword. Well, he was fairly sure he hadn't. And once he got there they'd told him he was supposed to get a new sword anyway. This one was rather more fiery than the last one. It made him somewhat nervous. Of course the fire was supposed to be holy and only harmful to the fallen – the demons. So it would be alright, right?

"Did you know any of them?" said a voice next to him as they waited for their orders.

Aziraphale was startled out of his thoughts. "Sorry?"

"Did you know any of the fallen ones?" asked the angel next to him, whose name he couldn't quite recall. "You know, from before?"

"Oh no! Not at all, I wouldn't keep such company!"

The other angel quickly looked away. "Never mind then."

"Oh." Aziraphale suddenly felt absolutely miserable. "No, I didn't mean... I'm sorry, did you--? I wasn't saying it would be your fault if..."

The angel shook their head and left his side, going to stand in another corner of the heavenly barracks.

"Oh."

Aziraphale looked outside. The cloudy landscape was vast, brilliant and endless. In the distance there were angry flashes of light and shadow where battles were being fought. He wondered if Heaven would ever feel peaceful again.

When the call finally came he wasn't ready. The sword felt awkward in his hand and he wanted to get rid of it. Was there no other role he could take? But he had been assigned as a soldier and God made no mistakes.

The fallen had taken the lowest three spheres of Heaven and Aziraphale's platoon was sent to take back the third sphere.

"Those wretches are up here feasting on heavenly manna and mocking the angels they've killed", said Zephaniel, their captain, shivering in anger. "They are corrupting our Lord's house with their sinful presence! We must unleash holy vengeance upon them!"

Aziraphale did his best to get in a vengeancy mood, or at least make an appropriate expression, but mostly he just felt vaguely ill.

They descended upon the demons who were in fact not feasting on anything but rather fully prepared for an attack. The sight was a shock to Aziraphale. They didn't look like angels anymore, their forms were corrupted and hideous. Some of them looked like they were rotting, some had strange and unnerving features that Aziraphale didn't yet have the words to describe. They all had an aura of malice and hatred.

Then before he knew it he was in the thick of it and he could do nothing but rely on his training[1]. He swung his sword and hoped very hard that this would be over soon. His mind was fixated on the demon attacking him, trying not to get hit himself and making a token effort to hit his opponent. He lost all sense of his surroundings right up until another angel suddenly appeared and impaled the demon from behind with a glorious stab of holiness. The demon gasped, collapsed and finally crumbled into dust.

The angel, whom Aziraphale now recognised as Camael, already known as one of the great warriors of Heaven, smiled benevolently at him. "Your first time in the heat of it, eh?"

"Y-yes. Yes in fact." Aziraphale felt rather out of balance. "Thank y–"

"Look out!" Camael interrupted suddenly, looking behind him. Without thinking Aziraphale flipped around and pointed his sword.

It was another glorious stab of holiness (more or less accidental). This demon died more slowly than the first one, staring at Aziraphale the entire time.

So this was war, Aziraphale thought, distantly, as his foe disappeared into the aether.

"Well done!" said Camael and clasped his shoulder before promptly flying off to fight another demon. Now that he had a moment to look around, Aziraphale realised he had been somewhat separated from the others. He spread his wings to follow behind his comrade but then, out of nowhere, an immense wave of water hit him and threw him off course.

It must be Raphael's wave, he thought. The archangels were here and would surely end it all soon. But the universe had turned into a storm and he couldn't find anyone. All he could do was flee from it.

He finally found a peaceful corner behind a friendly cloud, now completely lost but secretly quite relieved about it. He looked at his sword, still flaming like anything, showing no signs of having just destroyed an angelic being.

His contemplations were quickly cut short as someone else landed next to him, hissing in pain and patting furiously at their (literally) smoking body. "An actual WAVE of holy water! That's got to be cheating, that is", the stranger whined.

"Er..." said Aziraphale.

"Oh." said the stranger. An eerie pair of yellow eyes blinked at him. "Er... hello. This is awkward, I thought you were one of ours."

"What?! _Me?_ "

"No offence, it's just that all of your pals are out there celebrating our retreat."

"Ah. Good to hear then", Aziraphale said, somewhat flimsily.

"Yeah, good for you." The demon glanced at his sword. "So... are we going to fight then or what?"

"Oh... yes... right!" He had completely forgotten about that. "Er... would you like to start?"

"Not really."

"Oh."

They avoided each others's gazes for a minute. He really shouldn't talk to his enemies before fighting them, it made the murdering part too awkward.

"I mean, do we actually have to do this?" said the demon.

Aziraphale straightened up. "Of course we do! You did invade Heaven!"

"Look, I didn't even want to come really", said the demon. "But you know how it is, got to follow orders and all that."

Well, that was uncomfortably relatable.

"I think I'll just slip out, if you don't mind", the demon continued. "Back down I mean." He gestured with this head.

"Oh. That's alright then."

"Right."

"Right."

The demon flew off. Aziraphale watched him take a dive down towards the second sphere where it seemed the demons had been retreating to.

"Aziraphale!" someone yelled, shaking him out of his stupor.

"Here!" he replied and flew back to them. He joined his comrades in their celebrations and wished he could feel as cheerful about it as they did.

* * *

**Epilogue: Eden**

It had been an unholy ruckus, which was, of course, the whole point of the exercise. Still, Crawly hadn't quite expected it to go THIS bad. All for one silly apple.

He slithered away, deep in thought. It had been too easy, hadn't it? You'd think causing the Fall of Man would have taken a bit more of an effort, wouldn't you? Unless, of course, it was all _meant_ to happen...

Then he noticed a figure up on the wall, looking out into the wasteland outside the Garden. A very familiar figure. Crawly would have recognised that fluffy angel anywhere. "Oh well", he thought. "Might as well go say hi while I'm here."

* * *

**Footnotes:**

11 "Training" was in fact a generous description. This being the first war ever, nobody had quite figured out how fighting worked yet, but they had done their best.[return to text]

**Author's Note:**

> I know this wasn't super shippy (I mean they literally just met, give them some time (a few thousand years or so...)) but hey, fun fact: according to Dante Alighieri the third sphere of Heaven is the sphere of lovers. (Or so says Wikipedia anyway. Idk, I never made it to Paradise.) It felt appropriate
> 
> I did some research into angelology but ended up ignoring most of it because it's far too messy and if the show didn't care about it, why should I? (Okay I do care about it because I love this sort of world building, but I got frustrated by all the contradictions.)


End file.
